Before they left, they went over all the arguments for selling. “The place is too big for you, Mother. What do you need of a yard this size? Or a house with this many rooms? Or a barn?” Their talk was sensible. All the arguments seemed on their side. “And above all the reasons, is the one that it’s going to be lonesome for you here.” They were unanimous in that opinion of their mother’s coming loneliness.

Abbie thought about it a great deal that summer before it was time for Grace to go. At times she decided that she was foolish to stay in the old place. The children were right. It was only old-fashioned, narrow people who never made a change. She believed she would go up to Lincoln and look at cottages. In the city there would be a larger life for her, new contacts, opportunities to see and hear better things. Just as she had half reconciled herself to the plan, she would walk down the path between the cedars, which she and Will had set out, look at her hollyhocks and delphinium, blood-red and sea-blue against the White pickets, stand for a time and gaze over toward the heavy fringe of willows and oaks and elms along Stove Creek. Everything looked familiar,—friendly. There would never be another real home for her. Home was something besides so much lumber and plaster. You built your thoughts into the frame work. You planted a little of your heart with the trees and the shrubbery.

It was the only old home the children had ever known. There ought to be a home for children to come to,—and their children,—a central place, to which they could always bring their joys and sorrows,—an old familiar place for them to return to on Sundays and Christmases. An old home ought always to stand like a mother with open arms. It ought to be here waiting for the children to come to it,—like homing pigeons.

On the next Sunday Abbie was ready with her decision. “No, I’ve decided. I’m going to stay here. This is my home.”

They went over all the arguments again. “The place is too big for you, Mother. What do you need of a house this size? Or a barn? And above all, with Grace gone, it will be too lonely for you here. . . .”

Abbie looked beyond the poplars, stared for a moment beyond the Lombardy poplars into the deepening prairie twilight.

“No,” she said quietly, “you wouldn’t understand. It won’t be lonely here.”

CHAPTER XXVI

That fall after Grace went away to school, John’s and Eloise’s first child was born.

“You’ll want me to come, won’t you?” Abbie had asked Eloise with her usual desire to be helpful.

“Oh, no,” Eloise had said hastily,—a little too hastily. “John wants me to have a trained nurse,—the very best.”

Little hurts! Little pleasures! How they made up the whole of Abbie Deal’s life.

Eloise named the boy Wentworth, and proceeded to bring him up by the ritual of a red volume in which she held implicit and humorless faith.